The present invention relates, generally, to the field of computing, and more particularly to the field of digital integrated circuit design.
Integrated circuits are a family of electronic circuits which incorporate large numbers of tiny transistors printed onto small semiconductor wafers. Compared to traditional circuits, which are composed of discrete electronic components, integrated circuits are orders of magnitude smaller, cheaper, faster, and more reliable. Furthermore, integrated circuits lend themselves well to mass production and building-block circuit design. As a result, integrated circuits are now found in almost every modern electronic device. Consequently, the process of designing integrated circuits has become of utmost importance to the advancement of computing and consumer electronics. A significant challenge is accounting for metal variation in circuit designs; metal variation is the naturally occurring variation in the attributes of metals when they are created. These variations are becoming more pronounced as technology progresses; as wires become smaller, resistance increases, and manufacturing flaws are more likely. Furthermore, as designs of each circuit become more complex, a larger metal stack or more layers are required to route all the signals, which magnifies the aggregate effects of variations. Current methods, such as parasitic extraction, attempt to take into account all possible conditions to produce the metal variation, which requires a large amount of input data and can be extremely resource-intensive.